Leonardo DiCaprio-Backed Fund Donated $5 Million To The Amazon Rainforest

Earth Alliance, a charitable organisation backed by the famous actor and philanthropist, Leonardo DiCaprio, is set to donate a huge $5 million toward the preservation of the Amazon Tropical Rainforest.

Reportedly working with local partners and indigenous communities, the money will be donated directly to five local organizations, which include the Instituto Associacao Floresta Protegida (Kayapo), the Coordination of the Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB), the Instituto Kabu (Kayapo), the Instituto Raoni (Kayapo), and the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA).

As many may already know, there have been a number of devastating fires spreading throughout the Amazon and according to the fund's website, this donation is in response to them. According to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), more than 72,000 fires have broken out so far this year, which is a massive, and frankly quite scary, increase from last years number of 40,000 fires. Many experts have said that this is most likely due to the increased cattle farming and agricultural business that is occurring within and around the Amazon.

Either way, more fires are extremely bad and something needs to be done, not just to help stop them, but also prevent so many from happening again the rest of this year, and future years. The Amazon being the ‘lungs of the Earth’ is far too valuable to lose, let alone the variety of flora and fauna, even indigenous people, that have made their home there. They can't just be forced out with nowhere to go, something needs to change.

Philanthropic Efforts

All his life, DiCaprio has been dedicated to helping the environment, and people in need, saving as many lives and as much nature as he can. When he was just 24, back in 1998, he set up the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, which is devoted to promoting environmental awareness. Since then, the foundation has been involved with projects in over 40 countries and has produced two short web documentaries. It's even helped conserve nature financially by funding debt-for-nature swaps, which is basically a financial transaction where a portion of a developing nation’s foreign debt is forgiven in exchange for local investments in environmental conservation measure, an ingenious idea, really.

That's not all though, DiCaprio has never been afraid to pull out his checkbook when a disaster hits. Even since earning his millions in huge blockbuster films such as Titanic, he has been donating to various charities and causes. For example, In 2010, he donated $1 million to relief efforts in Haiti after the earthquake. Then in April of 2013, DiCaprio donated $61,000 to GLAAD. After Hurricane Harvey in 2017, DiCaprio put forward $1 million to the United Way Harvey Recovery Fund.

For all his efforts towards charitable causes and nature conservation, DiCaprio has won numerous awards, including the Martin Litton Environment Award, in 2001, from Environment Now, and the Environmental Leadership Award in 2003 from Global Green USA. In addition to all of this, he also now has a seat on the board of the World Wildlife Fund, Global Green USA, International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Natural Resources Defence Council, which is quite an impressive roster, to say the least.